15 December 2011 11:11 PM

Frozen con

As regular readers of this site will know, I have long been troubled by the systemic political and cultural bias at the BBC. It is not just that I am so concerned about the effects of this distorted world view, refracted through such a uniquely influential lens upon the world, upon public discourse. It is also because such an abdication from the founding principles of the BBC, one of the pillars of British society and the erstwhile crucible of some of its noblest ideals of the public good, seems to me to strike at the very heart of not just the Beeb itself but of all that I most loved and admired about Britain. As with the BBC, so it is with the country.

Throughout the relentless escalation of such concerns, however, there were a few oases in the Beeb’s output in which those otherwise rapidly diminishing ideals seemed to continue to flower. One such was its natural history programmes, which became ever more glorious, astounding and mesmeric, and their iconic presenter, Sir David Attenborough, widely considered to be one of Britain’s national treasures, largely because of his wonderful voice and magisterial presence.

Some may have winced at the anthropomorphism of these programmes and the grating implicit message that the animal world was far superior to the human race. But the real draw was of course the footage of the animals in their habitats, filmed by the most incredible photography which produced images of outstanding beauty.

Well, now we know some of this photography seemed incredible because it was just that -- incredible. It was not what it made itself out to be at all. It was a fake, a fix, a fraud. It emerged last week that shots of newborn polar bear cubs, which viewers were led to believe had been shot in the Arctic like the rest of the programme, had actually been filmed at a wildlife centre in the Netherlands – interspersed with actual pictures of the Arctic. The programme did not tell viewers that the cubs were born to a polar bear in a zoo. This was only revealed in a video among 14 other clips accompanying this programme on the BBC website.

The BBC claimed that Sir David’s narration was carefully worded so that it did not mislead audiences. Yet as the camera followed a female polar bear in the Arctic, he said:

‘“She starts to dig a shallow nest... once the snow here is deep enough, she'll dig down to make a den. She’ll then lie waiting for her cubs to be born as winter sets in...On these side slopes beneath the snow, new lives are beginning.”’

The viewers were thus led to believe that this was the bear which gave birth to these cubs. Much of the wonder and attraction of such footage derives from the impression that viewers are actually watching these events in their spectacular natural habitat – that they are watching nature in the frozen wild. For this particular sequence, viewers were therefore grossly misled.

That in itself was shocking enough. What was far worse, however, was the reaction to this revelation. For many seemed not to care in the slightest. The BBC justified it with an apparently uncomprehending insouciance which totally missed the point. Sir David’s own response, when he was asked about the fake footage, was quite jaw-dropping.

‘“During the middle of this scene, when you're trying to paint what it's like in the middle of winter in the Pole, do you say, ‘Oh, by the way, this is filmed in a zoo? It would completely ruin the atmosphere and destroy the pleasure of the viewers. It’s not a falsehood. How far do you take this? This is a penguin but actually it’s a different penguin colony than we did for that one’ – come on. We’re making movies.”'

‘“If you had tried to put a camera in the wild in a polar bear den, she would either have killed the cub or she would have killed the cameraman.”’

--a response echoed by Lord Patten, chairman of the Beeb’s own regulatory body, the BBC Trust, who said:

“The alternative was either been dead bears or dead people.”

Well maybe so; but what kind of an excuse is that? What if, during last summer’s riots, broadcasters had arrived in an area after the looting had finished -- and had then got some young people to put on hoodies and smash a few more windows so they could film them?

What if it footage of, say, a war reporter pictured running the gauntlet of roadside bombs in Afghanistan had actually been filmed in a mocked-up sandpit in Shepherd’s Bush? What would be the reaction if the producer had then justified this on the grounds that actually filming in Afghanistan would have got the film crew killed, but that telling viewers it was filmed in Shepherd’s Bush would have ruined the atmosphere because after all – come on! -- they were making movies?

The vacuity of these responses was excelled only by the BBC’s Director-General Mark Thompson, who had the gall to suggest to a Commons committee that this was a non-story that newspapers had whipped up in revenge for the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking—and that BBC surveys showed that viewers didn’t want programmes interrupted by disclaimers.

Among the media, various commentators too sprang to the BBC’s defence with some even more astonishing arguments. One declared it was

mean and how ludicrous

to charge Sir David with falsehood -- even though she went on to describe how she herself had been with him on a previous occasion when he went to film birds in the rainforest , but when the birds failed to materialise for the benefit of the cameras other birds were filmed in a cave elsewhere and spliced into the rainforest sequence.

Another expressed fury – not with Frozen Planet but with those in the press who had attacked

‘...a completely standard and legitimate technique, openly explained on the BBC website, of filming in zoos, or the studio, images that cannot conceivably be recorded in the wild... No one who has admired these programmes can take the accusations seriously... The sheer abundance of rare and unprecedented images in these programmes dwarfs the supposed flaws their critics fixate on. For me it raises a horrible question. Is newspaper journalism a destructive enterprise?’

Exposing a deceit is a destructive exercise, eh? Of course, because this deceit was exposed by the Daily Mirror – and since the tabloids are held to be the incarnation of evil, any truths they report must be damned as an attack upon the righteous, and any lies they expose must be defended at all costs.

Even more dismaying still was the huge number of comments by readers on newspaper websites stating that indeed they didn’t care if the footage was faked because the films were so gorgeous and so who cared whether the Arctic was in fact a Dutch zoo and Sir David was a national treasure and how dare anyone attack him. Yet there are others still who have been appalled by these revelations:

'Tory MP Therese Coffey said she was one of those that ‘did believe that the extraordinary coverage of the polar bears was genuine’. She said the BBC had ‘spoilt’ the ‘fantastic’ programme, adding:

"For me I will probably never look at a BBC nature programme in the same way, [but instead] to see, was it trick cameras."'

There is more than shock in such a reaction. There is deep disappointment and even sadness. For the BBC is more than just a venerable British institution. It is an emblem of the nation. As it is with the BBC, so it is with the country. The dismissal and even defence of the BBC’s polar deceit is an emblem of a culture that no longer understands the distinction between fact and fakery. I think that for those who have understood the significance of this deception for both the BBC and for Britain, their hearts are simply broken.

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The real problem with David Attenborough and the BBC's wildlife coverage is its relentlless evolutionist propaganda which even creeps into dramas like The Lost World and Lark Rise to Candleford. Even University Challenge includes anti Intelligent Design propaganda dressed up as questions, I have seen this on three occasions.

Since the BBC's own Mori 2006 poll showed that barely half of us fully accept Darwinism despite cradle to grave propaganda, why are the science based critisicms of Darwinism coming from eminent men of science like Michael Behe, John Sanford and Stephen Meyer never covered? There has never been a BBC documentary examining the arguments against Darwinian evolution from irreducible complexity, information theory and DNA

The BBC breaks its charter and goes against the public interest by refusing to cover the scientific arguments and evidence against evolution theory.

Emblem of the nation? Which one? I am English. I get labelled 'British' to justify confiscatory taxes like the Licence 'Fee' that benefit those who pay almost nothing towards it. The BBC should be dismantled. I heard Richard Bacon sniffily - Richard is famed for his sniffing you remember - condemning criticism of Attenborough on Radio 5Live this week by saying opponents 'missed so many wonderful shots' and 'must have had to ignore most of the programme to get to that sort of complaint'. You'll never change them. These people earn a living spending other people's money. They are innured to reason by an over-developed sense of entitlement. Sack the lot or stop paying the Licence Tax.

Dear Mel, your skill and power of expression is urgently needed to address numerous examples of BBC bias and omission in many areas, including serious international matters - in the great scheme of things this little polar bear trick is really not a big deal.

To even contemplate trying to film this in the Arctic is virtually impossible; to contemplate disturbing the brith process in the wild is even more crazy. Intrusion into the birth process would be hugely detrimental to both the mother and the cubs as well as the cameramen if the mother got to them first.

There was no deception, any viewer with more than three functional braincells would understand the limits of what could and could not be filmed in the wild.

There was no deception unless any journalist/blogger was looking to create a story out of nothing to stir up more unnecessary anti BBC sentiment. In the current times the BBC do a reasonable job, would you prefer us go back to the propagandist style of Josef Goebbels as our main public service reporting??

You couldn't simply congratulate them on creating possibly the most exceptional series of natural world TV there has ever been.

Anna asks: Does it really matter whether that took place in the frozen Arctic or a wildlife centre?

No, but that isn't the point. What matters is that the BBC weren't honest. And the dismissive self-justifications offered by these arrogant moguls add only insult to injury. And the peurile way that so many viewers are taken in by this 'explanation' seems to indicate that sadly, the public seem to prefer captivating lies to plain truth. Worrying.

Attenborough's pretentious whispering style of voice-over is an affectation which seems to date from that famous 'encounter' with the gorillas. That was itself shot in Diane Fossey's gorilla sanctuary, but most people I've spoken to have always assumed it was a spontaneous encounter in 'the wild'.

Sorry, Melanie. Usually I agree with most of what you say but in this case I disagree.

What we witnessed was the miracle of birth and renewal. Does it really matter whether that took place in the frozen Arctic or a wildlife centre? Is the miracle diminshed? Is it any less a wonder to witness the birth of kittens at home instead of in a farm barn or some more outlying situation?

You are equating an essential truth - the miracle - with the lying and obfuscation of politicians. and the relentless political bias of the BBC.

While the BBC should have been more up front about where the scene was filmed this is basically a trivial matter. But some people never need much excuse to attack the BBC, a valuable institution for all its faults. Look at Fox News to see what would happen if the BBC did not exist.

I have watched all the Frozen Planet programmes and enjoyed them enormously. When they showed the polar bear with her cubs it didn't seem possible that the sequence had been filmed in the wild, but as nothing had been said to indicate otherwise I decided that maybe they were living charmed lives. I agree that no-one said that it had been filmed in the wild, but David Attenborough's commentary led one to believe that it had been. There was nothing to stop the BBC from putting a footnote to that particular episode. The question now is, how many other shots in the series were taken in a zoo? The viewing public have no way of knowing and frankly I now view every shot with deep suspicion - which is a pity, because the series is very good, has some beautiful photography and is well delivered. I just wish people would tell the truth and not lie by omission.

All the programme makers had to do was to tell us of the dangers involved in filming such as scene and explain what was really happening with the zoo-filmed sequence. I do not think this would have spoiled the documentary for any but the most rigid of perfectionists. It would also convey to viewers a better sense of how wild animals really respond to human observation and thus would have had educational value. However, it may have taken a little of the shine off the image being conveyed of 'brave film crews travelling to the ends of the earth and enduring hardship to bring us breathtaking footage of nature in the raw'.
That being said, I do think that some commentators are using this revelation as a stick to give the self-satisfied BBC a well-earned beating.

While I cannot think of any valid reason to put a camera into a wild polar bear den and risk the life of a cub of this endangered species (I would not even disturb my pet ferrets in this way while with new kits) I do believe the BBC have gone way off track. The recent supposed science series Walking with Cavemen displays how stupidly political some of the BBC's output has become with assertive Cro-Magnum women settling wars between her tribe and nearby Neanderthals who were estimated to be far stronger than humans and a diverse cast of cavemen as you could imagine at a time when the total human population could be counted in thousands, the producers seem to have literally lost the plot. This same cast could have been dropped into Dr Who as multicultural alien reptile people or anything the BBC produces where plausible content comes secondary to the far left political message.

Melanie Phillips hits the spot yet again.
She continues to hit the elite and those seeking the peace of the graveyard right where it hurts them...in their double minded hypocrisies and loose thinking.
I`m always amazed that people don`t see just how good she is...like Peter Hitchens, she speaks for most of the nation-especially the likes of me who were taken in by the Left back in the seventies etc.
The BBC is a useless stuffed truffle that has been rumbled ever since 2006 and their doctoring of the Queens footage, their phone-ins...and Ross and Brand etc.
That people are that stupid to think the BBC impartial shows that its visceral instinctive reflexes and not reason or evidence we`re talking of here.
Cherish this lady...of far more pertinence that Christopher Hitchens!

//The programme did not tell viewers that the cubs were born to a polar bear in a zoo. This was only revealed in a video among 14 other clips accompanying this programme on the BBC website// So no attempt to hide the origin of the film clip then. Perhaps Mel would suggest a better way of filming a polar bear give birth in closeup?. The film wasn't misrepresenting the way a polar bear gives birth just presenting the normal way in the context of a film, safely. Or does Mel propose the camera team should risk their lives to show an event that could be filmed with far less risk?

Melanie, you are the best.
I'm now ashamed to think that at first I did actually shrug my shoulders over this.
I didn't watch the programme but was told about the amazing sequences in the den.
I thought it sounded pretty incredible, and so was not too surprise that it was faked.
But I didn't draw the full inference until I read this article.
You are right.
Untruth is untruth, whether it's about something vital or something trivial. What have we come to, that we take deception as a mere matter of course?
God help Britain, and I mean that literally. God is our only hope.

"For the BBC is more than just a venerable British institution." - We, born and raised in the USSR, knew the difference between propaganda - the Soviet State media - and the news - the BBC, the Voice of America and other western stations, (regulalry jammed because they told the truth). Fortunately those of us who now live in free countries have other choices of information, but to our compatriots back there we'd suggest they spare the effort of telling things apart: both the Russian and British State Media - the "venerable insitution" - are neither objective nor totally propagandist, attempting to brainwash you by about 75%. If happy with that, watch and listen to them, but if you have a modicum of intelligence and self-respect, turn elsewhere.

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